'Smiley Face Killers' linked to 40 deaths in US

They were all young men of college age who disappeared, usually after a night in the bars, and were later found dead in rivers and lakes.

'Smiley Face Killers' linked to deaths in four states

By Philip Sherwell in New York

5:15PM BST 03 May 2008

In 40 cases over the last decade, police in several states in America's mid-west and north-east concluded that the victims had drowned, often after student drinking binges.

But two retired New York police detectives last week went public with a startling and macabre alternative explanation for the series of apparent drownings. They say that they have evidence that a gang of serial killers is responsible for the deaths.

And in 22 cases across five states, they have found what they believe to be the sickening trademark signature of the psychopaths – either smiley face graffiti or distinctive sets of symbols daubed near the spot where the dead men's bodies entered the water. Nine of the smiley faces had a particularly sinister twist – they were drawn with horns.

That shocking claim has earned the alleged gang a chilling nickname: the "Smiley Face Killers". It is causing particular alarm in the neighbouring states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, where 19 of the deaths occurred.

James Sensenbrenner, a prominent Republican congressman from Wisconsin, has now called for the Federal Bureau of Investigations to re-open its files on the sequence of drowning deaths.

The FBI has so far insisted that it has found no evidence of any connection between the deaths or that serial killers are on the loose. In one case, however, Minnesota police have changed the cause of death from accidental to murder.

As a serving New York detective, Kevin Gannon had investigated the death of Patrick McNeill, a 20-year-old student, whose body was found in the Hudson River after he left a Manhattan bar in 1997.

Mr Gannon was convinced that the currents could not have carried the body to its final resting place and he promised the McNeill family that he would not let the case drop. After his retirement, he heard about a number of similar deaths in Minnesota in 2002, and drafted in his old colleague Anthony Duarte to help him investigate his suspicions.

"It's just preposterous to think that all these young men came out of the bars and walked into the water," said Mr Gannon.

The two men have used their own savings to visit the sites of all 40 deaths. They say that while police investigations have focused on the last known location of the dead men, they have instead tried to work out where the bodies entered the water.

Following that line of inquiry, they found the symbols, often the smiley face which they believe is a cynical taunting calling card, at more than half the sites. And at one location, there was the mysterious word "sinsiniwa" – which later turned out to be the name of a street where another one of the dead men was last seen.

But they say that the graffiti is not their only evidence. By concentrating on other details known about the corpses they say they have uncovered an informant linked to the gang as well as a motive – although they have declined to reveal this.

Most of the victims were popular, athletic and good-looking white students aged 19-23, prompting media speculation that if the "Smiley Face Killers" exist, they are preying on particular "preppy" types. The detectives believe the victims were knocked out, possibly with the date rape drug GHB, and that their bodies were then slipped into the water. As the corpses have often not been found for weeks or months, and the cases were put down as accidental drownings, toxicology tests and postmortems have not been carried out. The waters would in any case have washed away most evidence, they say.

In his letter to the FBI last week, Mr Sensenbrenner wrote: "The gruesome mockery of these alleged deaths, as denoted by the 'smiley-face' clue retrieved at the various sites around the country, demonstrates the cold-blooded nature of the killers."